Biskmatar
by Feral Phoenix
Summary: REPOSTED! A bedtime story about the origin of the Biskmatar class. For fun, try to figure out who Morgan and Gaol's parents are. ?x?, vaguely implied BxE.


Biskmatar

DISCLAIMER: I do not own FFTA or any of its original characters, plot, classes, stuff, etc. The story of Morrigu is purely fanfiction and came out of my own weird head, so it is mine, as are the characters Morgan, Gaol, and Aria. Please do not take them without asked permission. Thank you. Also, Stroud and Devius (Gurnda) are characters from Sword of Mana who belong to Brownie Brown and have been randomly incorporated into the story because of my strange desire to put them there, just because I'm a fangirl and I wanted to. So there nyeh. Don't complain, it could be much worse and I could make a complete crossover.

The little viera girl opened the door, barged into the room, and sighed in relief and exhaustion. She cast off her Puera hat (A/N: A Puera is a jesterlike deathdealer sprite. The hat is like a moogle Juggler's only all blue with much longer points), translucent skirt, winged boots, metal-plated gloves, and skintight leotard, shimmying into a powder-blue shift that came down to her knees instead. Although she was in informal dress, she did not remove the swordbelt that hung diagonally across her chest, with her knightsword fixed at her back where she could easily get at it.

"MO-OMMMM! I'M HO-OME!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, completely disregarding her scattered garments, which lay in disarray all over the entrance to the palace room.

"Morgan!" The girl was knocked onto her backside by a speeding-bullet of a little boy, who threw his arms around her happily.

"Oomph... Gaol!... that hurt..!" Morgan protested, but she quickly succumbed to a giggling fit. She couldn't help the fact that she adored her baby brother--she always had since his birth. Gaol had shoulder-length, slightly messy golden hair and wide sapphire eyes. His left eye had a golden fault in it near the pupil, which just made Morgan and the two's mother love him all the more. Unlike Morgan, Gaol took after their father--he was human.

"Morganna... have you left your things in a pile by the door again?" Morgan looked up through her silver-white bangs guiltily at her mother, who had also entered the room. "We have a visitor tonight; Lady Aria came to inquire about things. Please go pick up your clothes." Grudgingly, Morgan shoved Gaol off her lap and gathered her discarded attire, dumping it into a bin near the door.

Morgan's mother, a viera of somewhat noble birth, was in a position of high regard in Bervenia due to her tactical genius and superior archery skills. She certainly was regal-looking in her soft, simple jade green dress with only a golden armband and chain necklace to show her high station. She wore her leather archer's wristbands as well, as she always did--there was no telling when she would be needed in the palace. She was a lithe and proud creature, lovely in her own way, although she would never again be a sprightly, short-haired teenager in a new fledgling clan--as a mother, she'd let her tresses grow long and stopped being a part of the clan wars to take a stand in the politics of Ivalice. Morgan worshipped her.

Morgan and Gaol, followed by their mother, headed into the small but well-furnished sitting room, where a black nu mou clad in red silk robes was reclining in an armchair. Seeing the children, she stood up. "Well, here're the kids then! How is everything, little biskmatar?" The nu mou's ice-blue eyes twinkled with mirth.

"Good evening, Lady Aria," Morgan said with a polite curtsy before running up and flinging her arms around her old friend. Only when she released Aria did Morgan realize that the nu mou's previously pure black tresses had streaks of red through them. She gasped and started giggling again. "What did you do to your hair?"

"That's just what I had asked milady when you came in," Morgan's mother said mildly, trying to hide a wry smile behind her hand. "Now why don't you inform us, Aria? It looks... quite different."

"Her hair be pretty," Gaol said staunchly, always ready to stick up for his 'aunt'.

Aria grinned. "Okay, okay, if you really have to know. Uncle Ezel dared me to do it."

Ezel Berbier, the infamous hermetic, wasn't really Aria's uncle, but he and her blood uncle were such close friends that she considered him to be. Even at the "ripe old age" of forty-one, Ezel was still up to his old mischief, and got along very well with his adopted niece, who had a streak of devilishness to match his own. The two were constantly getting each other to do very foolish things.

"Aria, you should know better," Morgan's mother scolded. "Just think what everyone will say!"

Aria's grin grew wider. "I know. Most people will just shake their heads and call me the right apprentice to the Loony Old Windbag, but Uncle Babus is gonna be livid. I can just see him now..." She planted her hands on her hips, puffed up her fur so that it was in slight disarray, and took on a severe, scolding face and tone. " 'Young lady, what have you gotten yourself into with that hooligan this time! You will get that dye out of your hair immediately, and I forbid you to see that fool of a Berbier ever again! He is a terrible influence on you! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You ought to...' " Aria strode back and forth in mock irritation, her tail's tip twitching, making wide gestures and getting very red in the face.

"Aria Swain!" Morgan's mother said helplessly, struggling to control her laughter. Morgan and Gaol were nearly in fits. The truth was, Aria's imitation of Babus was almost completely accurate. She'd gotten into so much trouble that his long-winded lectures were easy for her to predict, and she took as much delight in them as a child took in play.

Dropping the act, Aria giggled, acting as though she wasn't any older than Morgan instead of her own quite mature nineteen. "You've got to admit that's a pretty good impression," she said with an infectious smile. "Anyhow, I should probably get going. I have things to do, people to see, lectures to attend..." Aria headed off towards the door, still talking, even after she'd left the room.

"Now as for you two," Morgan's mother said to her progeny strictly, "bedtime."

"Mom!" Gaol protested with all the persuasive power he had in his two-year-old being. He pouted, let his hair fall into his face, and looked up beseechingly out of huge blue eyes.

Ignoring her brother, Morgan nodded. "I'm bushed. Let's crash."

Gaol sighed and pouted further, but he followed Morgan and his mother into the bedroom. "Then tell us a story."

The two's mother smiled wryly. "You've had story after story all day," she chided gently. "Haven't you had enough already?"

"No!" Gaol's sunny response got a weary laugh out of his sister. "Morgan not there, she didn't get no story. More story now!"

"A story would be nice," Morgan admitted, sinking into the sheets of her bed without bothering to take off her shift and swordbelt.

Morgan's mother sighed and put a hand to her forehead, brushing her silver hair out of her eyes. "Oh, all right. But what should I tell you that you haven't heard already? Perhaps the tale of the hero Gaol, your namesake, and his comrade Lini?" Gaol and Morgan both sat up immediately. "No... not tonight. Not yet. You're still too young to understand it fully. But perhaps... perhaps I can tell you of Morrigu."

The name struck a chord within Morgan's memory. "Morrigu... Morrigu..." she said softly to herself, taking a liking to the double-"R" of the name. "Where have I heard that name before? It sounds so familiar..."

Morgan's mother smiled distantly. "Morgan, Morganna, Morgra... all forms of the ancient name Morrigu. She... she was the first biskmatar, little one, and your namesake. Just as your brother is named after a famous biskmatar, you are named for the first.

"Morrigu was a human woman with a strong strain of rukavi blood in her veins." Rukavi, humanlike demons, lived in a country across the sea, and were mostly the victims of old wives' tales and made to sound worse than they were. Many of the rukavi who came to Ivalice were in fact hateful creatures who only wanted power (the rukavi republic did not stand for would-be dictators), which only made the stories worse. Still, some rukavi were merely vagabonds doomed to wandering--they were also prone to falling in love with pure-hearted humans. "Her golden eyes, a similar shade to her long honey tresses, were proof of this, and many wondered at her appearance, for she seemed to be a goddess made to walk upon the earth.

"The lady Morrigu was trained by her rukavi father to wield a sword and cast magic of darkness, and taught by her mother to only think of the good of others. And so she went out into the world, a simple girl with great beauty, coming from without as well as within.

"Morrigu's power was undeniable, though she refused to sink so low as to join a clan; she believed that the fights for power and land were wrong. She helped rid the land of one evil after another, as rukavi of the foreign lands came to claim her for their own and evils such as the Worldwyrm Ogma plagued Ivalice.

"On one such fight to protect the people, Morrigu encountered a sand-haired young man being attacked by monsters. She fought them off, and he joined her in her crusade. Morrigu found herself, for the first time, to be a victim of her heart--she fell hopelessly in love with this man from nowhere.

"As the battle ended, and the spoils claimed, Morrigu's companion revealed himself as the eldest prince of Ivalice, Gwynyth of the Bright Star. The two of them were soon married under the blessings of the king and retreated to a small town near Bervenia to live a peaceful life.

"The queen, however, was not so happy with this decision. She did not like the idea of her first son being paired to a country girl whose skill was of the sword and who had no dowry. She connived with her second son Gwydyr, who had long sought Morrigu's hand but was refused many a time. So Gwydyr disguised himself as his brother Gwynyth and visited Morrigu in the darkness, when even she could not tell between.

"Dark deeds occured, my children, which I shall not recall until another night. But of this you must know: Within the span of three years, Morrigu twice found herself to be heavy with child. And even to this day, no one is sure who the father of her children was.

"Gwydyr claimed Morrigu by virtue of the children, and Gwynyth was certain that he was betrayed and cast Morrigu and her babes from his home, proclaiming her a criminal to be hunted down.

"Devastated by this shock, Morrigu fled with her sons and came into distant lands. Though she spent the rest of her life running, she passed the secrets of her trade down to her two sons, Gurnda and Stroud. Under other guise, those two came back to aid the castle many times when Gwynyth was king, and therefore gave the title of biskmatar to the job of serving the prince or princess and being their protective knight--but that is another tale, for another night."

Morgan's mother looked from one bed to the other. Gaol, despite his protests at being put to bed so early, was sound asleep and had dropped off in the middle of the story, soothed by his mother's voice. Morgan was awake, but she was staring at the ceiling in the sleepy way that always preceded her nodding off as well.

The two's mother went to darken the oil lamp, but Morgan stopped her. "Mom?" Her voice was unusually thoughtful and not a bit sleepy. "Is it true, what people say about us biskmatars?"

_"We _biskmatars, Morgan."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever... but is it true that we draw our power from everything evil in this world? That our strength directly comes from hatred?" Trust Morgan to come up with a question like this so late at night. She had always been a bit precocious and was asking questions of her parents since she was old enough to speak. Her favorite things to ask were "Why?" and "Is it true?"; questions that their parents were often hard put to answer.

"If people looked beyond their noses and at the past, they would see that that is an idiotic superstition," Morgan's mother began frankly. "Consider Morrigu, the first and strongest of all biskmatars. She hated not, but loved and was betrayed, and found herself actually _lessened _by her grief and sorrow. Neither of her sons took their power from hate either, nor any dark emotion in themselves or in others. No, all biskmatars do not get their strength from evil."

"What about Dad then?" Morgan asked, a little sullenly. Of course, that's what she'd been after all along, and she knew that her mother knew what she'd been getting at and had refused to answer directly.

Morgan and Gaol's father was one of the first biskmatars to be seen in Ivalice for a good many years, and had made quite a name for himself with his adventures. He traveled frequently in order to keep his family in good order, but Morgan herself had not seen him since she was four years old. Shortly after her father had left that time, Gaol had been born, around the time of Morgan's fifth birthday. It had been so long that Morgan's memories of him were beginning to grow dim, but she remembered his slightly shadowed amber eyes well, as well as his callused hands and long mane of golden hair. Her father's voice and face were starting to fade from her mind.

"Your father... was a very troubled boy when we first met, Morgan. He'd never had an easy life, and he was still learning about his past as we got to know each other. He originally became stronger when he felt pain, depression, or anger, but now... things are different now. He joked to me once about how now, when he gets angry, all that happens is that he flies off the handle and lands in deep trouble. Trust me on this... he now draws his strength from love... from us."

"But, our dark magic..." Morgan began.

"Darkness and evil are not the same thing, Morgan... although many people of this age have forgotten that there is good in darkness as there is in everything else, and that evil may come in forms of light. Our darkness is a healing darkness, and one that stifles the pain of living. Remember that." The mother turned down the lamp and headed back to her daughter's side. "Good night, my dear. Sleep well, and think on what I've told you tonight." She kissed Morgan on the forehead and left, closing the door to the children's room.

"A healing darkness..." Morgan stared up at the ceiling and decided that maybe that kind of thing wasn't so bad, after all.

fin


End file.
